Britain has a monarchy. The monarch is said to exercise no power but many who do hold questionable positions of power draw that power - at least in part - from the ‘powerless’ monarch. Whatever the precise truth of it, the monarchy is clearly woven into the business of supposed governance (exercise of political theatre) at Westminster.

Prime Ministers are political-party-leaders made up from ‘nothing-special’ to almost-magical high status by the monarch who then - we are led to believe - follows prime-ministerial direction especially in the matter of creating quaintly theatrical Lords and Knights. In addition the monarch opens and closes parliamentary sessions and approves new laws.

Under the umbrella of monarchy honours such as ‘OBE’ are handed out to an assorted array of the fortunate in a manner to bring approval to the monarch by pleasing the simple folk. Foreign states are also buttered-up via such awards.

Westminster delivers an illusion of governance trumpeted as being markedly superior by virtue of checks-and-balances and a level of hard work and proper procedure that foreigners are said to envy and imitate. Reality is very different: Parliament simply plays banal cult-party-games. The outcome of its bizarre Alice-in-Wonderland antics is costly failure (in both human and monetary terms) year-on-year.

Regardless of the above, Britons stubbornly cling to their belief in democracy under which illusion they vote for the party of their choice at general elections. Rarely does any party survive its third term and upon losing, it passes the baton back to the party which previously failed. The monarch dutifully approves this transfer.

“Curiouser and curiouser.”

Behind all this: ‘The British Regime’ (a medieval relic) lives on, its 'worthies' enjoying the good life firmly anchored in ancestral acres while cocooned in obscene wealth. Obscene wealth is stored ‘off-shore’ in anachronistic monarch-owned tax havens. The Regime rules the roost untroubled by social unrest or unseemly confrontation with the ‘democratically empowered’ voter. And now the monarchy is subject to more ‘daunting’ exposure. Alice is blushing.